


evolving slowly

by favouriteyear



Category: DC Comics
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/favouriteyear/pseuds/favouriteyear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena thinks of her place in Gotham.</p>
            </blockquote>





	evolving slowly

**Author's Note:**

> **Spoilers:** Huntress: Year One; Birds of Prey, Battle for the Cowl etc.
> 
>  **Notes:** very tiny little Helena piece that I started writing while re-reading Huntress: Year One,hope you like.

_“Every hero has a story, not that I'm some kind of hero. But there comes a point when to survive, the hunted must become the Huntress”._

  
Her story starts the same way, most everyone else’s did. With tragedy; except...except not quite. She was born of violence.

  
She remembers how she prayed her father would die; the crippling horror as she watched it happen, the gut-wrenching pain- at watching her mother, bleed slowly to death.

  
She remembers silent, mistrustful stares at her boarding school, Justina’s kindness. She remembers Sal, and how he become her surrogate brother.

  
Mostly Helena remembers loneliness.

  
In Gotham, Batman makes it clear that it’s his city and she’s just a tourist, but stands her ground swears she’s going to make her own rules, live by her own rules. Batman tries to make her over, but she resists. She was born of blood, she was born of vengeance.

  
Still. In the deepest crevices of her mind, she doesn’t usually acknowledge, she wants him to accept her.

  
She finds herself working for Oracle, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes willingly. Mostly she finds she likes being around ‘Babs’ and even Dinah and then Zinda and Barda, and all of Oracle’s Birds.

  
At first she doesn’t know how to act around them, she’s been on her own for so long. She cannot remember the last time she actually _liked_ being around other people, or spent more than five minutes not thinking about punching their face in.

  
The more time she spends around the Birds, the less lonely she feels. Her relationship with Barbara is rocky at first; partly because of Nightwing and partly because of Barbara’s disapproval of her violent tactics. She tells herself she doesn’t care what Oracle or Batman think...but it’s always the same thing. She does. She wants them to accept her.

  
And then Batman dies, and things get freaky, Oracles calls on her, and she goes to fight for her. That’s when she realises. That in her utter and complete denial of having any ties to anyone, she’s forged them anyway.


End file.
